AGW: Fraud of Science

[Jerome]

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by JEROME DA GNOME

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

Uh, no.

[davidm]

Those mad, bad scientists! Conspiring for years, decades, to make up global warming!

But Jerome didn't fall for it!

[D. Scarlatti]

Stop the presses!

The Australia Herald-Sun’s Andrew Bolt claims the emails are “proof of a conspiracy which is one of the largest, most extraordinary and most disgraceful in moderrn [sic] science.”

Durrrr.

[Jerome]

The lead AGW scientists are stating very clearly that they hide data which is inconvenient to their beliefs, also that they manipulate the data to present their beliefs, also that they will destroy data which will harm their beliefs.

Not science, religion.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by JEROME DA GNOME

The lead AGW scientists are stating very clearly that they hide data which is inconvenient to their beliefs, also that they manipulate the data to present their beliefs, also that they will destroy data which will harm their beliefs.

Not science, religion.

Nope, you're wrong. And btw, you've already shown you have no clue what science is, or how it is done.

Being involved with this story myself, I know exactly what's going on. You and your other liars and hacks among the right-wing nutball crowd will probably be able to con a fair number of the gullible, though, so you can take some comfort in that.

[Jerome]

Is the below e-mail a fake?

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

[Jerome]

Davidm , I noticed that you have provided nothing more then invective against the reporters of the information in defense of the fraud "scientists".

Is that because you know their goose is cooked?

[davidm]

Originally Posted by JEROME DA GNOME

Davidm , I noticed that you have provided nothing more then invective against the reporters of the information in defense of the fraud "scientists".

Is that because you know their goose is cooked?

No, it's because I want to watch you tell more lies, you right-wing twit. It amuses me.

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by davidm

No, it's because I want to watch you tell more lies, you right-wing twit. It amuses me.

Originally Posted by JEROME DA GNOME

Is the below e-mail a fake?

[davidm]

Originally Posted by JEROME DA GNOME

Wow, this is the best you've got? You must start reading the right-wing twit bloggers who know nothing about science but are much better than this at quote mining.

How does the above -- an e-mail discussing a bogus bullshit journal and the crackpots publishing in it -- prove jack-shit about global warming?

[D. Scarlatti]

So it's fine for somebody to misrepresent and abuse one's work, but not at all fine for somebody else to grouse to their colleagues about those misrepresentations and that abuse. Now we have the usual gang of right-wing nuts picking through illegally obtained private correspondence, and this is also perfectly fine. Yet conservatives tell us theirs is the moral crusade.

[Zer0th]

Alleged CRU Emails - Searchable

Opinion:

CRU are terrified of McIntyre getting his hands on their data. Jones risks his career saying that he'd rather destroy it than hand it over... ditto the deletion of emails related to AR4. Blatant FOI subversion shouldn't look good to anyone, not even the theologically committed.

Mann would be better employed with the mafia.

Briffa is in deep shit re Yamal.

Trenberth makes a good impression... one might even think of him as a scientist

The comment at tAV [by the hacker/insider] suggests there's more to come... perhaps once a few dodgy defenses have been dug a little too deeply. We will see.

[ceptimus]

If the scientists are shown to have deliberately faked the data, they will be discredited and sacked.

Of course, faking data doesn't make the ice caps melt or sea levels rise. There is still some climate change occurring, even if some scientists are shown to have been overstating it.

[davidm]

Scientists Admit Conspiring to Defraud Public on Global Warming

FREETHOUGHT FORUM, Nov. 21, 2009 (Internet News Service) The world’s scientists admitted in an online news conference on Saturday that they had made up global warming.

“We concocted the whole thing out of thin air about 25 years ago over a drunken bet during a bachelor party,” said Edison Clowds, a meteorologist with the Weather Studies Institute in Cambridge, Mass. “The bet was that we could pull the wool over the eyes of the public by getting them to believe in some astonishingly stupid proposition. And by God, we did it.”

Dr. Clowds was one of approximately 60 million people worldwide who work as scientists or in science-related fields who conducted the news conference on Saturday at the Freethought-Forum. Every scientist on earth was privy to the scam, Dr. Clowds explained.

“They had to be,” he said, “because scientific data is publicly available and peer-reviewed, and mistakes are caught quickly. So we had to have a united, monolithic front of every scientist on earth to make sure that no one spilled the beans about the obvious lies and distortions in the laughable data that we disseminated.”

Dr. Clowds said that one highly publicized study included data from his 6-year-old son sticking his head out the window on a hot July day and saying, “It sure is hot out there, Pop!” Clowds said with a chuckle, “We got a lot of mileage out of that.”

The tens of millions of scientists who attended the news conference said they decided to come clean after hacked e-mails from scientists at a climate institute blew the cover off the conspiracy.

“I feel really bad about it, to tell you the truth,” said A. Sim Tote, a mathematician at Stanford University. “At first it was a just a lark, and we only planned to continue for a few weeks before revealing that it was a big joke. But then the thing took on a life of its own. It’s hard to explain the feeling of power one gets from pulling the wool over the
eyes of the public.”

Dr. Clowds said that in reality, the whole earth will freeze into a “gigantic fucking ball of ice in 2012, just like the Mayans predicted.”

[Deadlokd]

Originally Posted by davidm

Being involved with this story myself, I know exactly what's going on.

So what is going on?

I have no doubt that the climate is changing because of human activity, but this isn't the first time I've heard of the numbers being massaged to make it seem worse.

[Dingfod]

OMG, we're all going to ... well, something.

[fragment]

RealClimate's response. This stands out in particular:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

I see nothing wrong with people organising a boycott of a journal if it sinks in quality. As it turns out the paper in question was so appalling that several editors resigned in protest. See here.

Most of what I've seen of the other emails is similarly benign once you take the time to actually understand the content of them rather than just reading in a preconception about nefarious motives. The talk of evading FOI requests is pretty bad, but even that has some context which reveals that the motive isn't fraudulent:

We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an “audit” by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues. In my opinion, Steven McIntyre is the self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science. I am unwilling to submit to this McCarthy-style investigation of my scientific research. As you know, I have refused to send McIntyre the “derived” model data he requests, since all of the primary model data necessary to replicate our results are freely available to him. I will continue to refuse such data requests in the future. Nor will I provide McIntyre with computer programs, email correspondence, etc. I feel very strongly about these issues. We should not be coerced by the scientific equivalent of a playground bully. I will be consulting LLNL’s Legal Affairs Office in order to determine how the DOE and LLNL should respond to any FOI requests that we receive from McIntyre.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by Deadlokd

So what is going on?

I have no doubt that the climate is changing because of human activity, but this isn't the first time I've heard of the numbers being massaged to make it seem worse.

It's a common criticism levelled at climate scientists. I'd suggest looking for specific accusations and seeing whether there is any actual evidence of such massaging. I haven't seen anything particularly damning on the numeral masseuse front in these emails yet, e.g. my take on one specific accusation over on TR.

[D. Scarlatti]

So JEROME is impervious to the butthurt not only here but throughout the intertubes.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by Deadlokd

So what is going on?

This, per Fragment's post. The so-called "trick" is probably the most "damning" thing in this entire cache, but it's all much ado about nothing. I'm disappointed, however, that Jerome Da Troll wasn't pushing this angle. He seems to be losing his Troll Mojo.

[Zer0th]

Jeff ID's reply to Gavin's piece at RealClimate.
(the link to the Russian FTP server was originally posted in a comment on this blog)

Collusion, Corruption, Manipulation and Obstruction « the Air Vent

[D. Scarlatti]

Isn't this the crux:

Data manipulation discussions. These are mostly hinted at except for a few instances but they are real ... I’ve read most [of the emails].

How does he know that data manipulation is real when it's only "hinted at"?

[The Lone Ranger]

Meanwhile,

At the rate they're currently shrinking, the polar icecaps will have disappeared by the year 2100 (and possibly much sooner).

[davidm]

Good lord, only a total idiot would deny that the scientific data strongly point to global warming and that it is largely if not entirely human induced; what other inference should we draw with the tracking of increased emissions with the rise of temperatures? Warming is empirically observed, and predictions made decades ago have been borne out in reality.

What this episode really shows, among other things, is the uselessness of the mainstream media in analyzing and reporting on stories and data of a complex nature. It also shows how ridiculous is the idea that "blogs" can replace good science and good reporting; these right-wing blogs "analyzing" this stuff (i.e., quote mining and pulling stuff out of context, which is probably pretty predictable since a lot of these clowns undoubtedly are also creationists) are useless.

If you want to talk about conspiracies, it's funny how the mainstream media essentially ignored a report, first published in The Guardian, that a whistleblower at the International Energy Association says that the I.E.A. knows peak oil is upon is and that the agency is massaging the figures on oil supply/production to mollify the U.S. and to avoid panic on the oil markets.

That got zippo attention from the mainstream U.S. media, but this hacked e-mail crap is all over the place.

It should also be noted that when scientists predict warming trends and tie it to human activity, they do so with stated "levels of confidence," which means that there is a high degree of probability that warming will occur and is tied to human activities. Scientists are not omniscient and do not claim to be, and there is always room for error.